It is 9:01 AM Sunday morning. You are sound asleep. It has been a hard week and this is your one day to catch up on some needed sleep. The phone rings. And rings! Slowly you sit up. The phone rings again. Impatient. You pick up the receiver, forcing civility into your voice. The caller, a neighbor, wants to know if he could borrow a ladder. “Why are you calling so early”, you either ask, or at least think. The answer is simple. The caller did not realize that you preferred to sleep Sunday mornings.
This scenario is played over and over, only the time and days of the week change. It is particularly troublesome for those who work non-standard shifts and are thus sleeping when most other people are awake. The temptation is to block calls (which is not an easy task) for certain hours, but then emergency or other important calls cannot get through. Often people have separate numbers for such emergencies, special codes programmed into their telephone systems so only a few people can get through, or they rely on caller ID to allow certain callers through while blocking other callers. None of these systems solve the problem particularly well.
It is now 9:30 PM Tuesday evening. You have a plane to catch at 6:00 AM and your alarm is set for 3:00 AM. You will be making a major presentation later in the day at your destination. The phone rings, waking you from a deep sleep. It is your neighbor again, wanting to know why you were so grumpy on Sunday. There must be a better solution to this problem than taking the phone off the hook—or finding a new home away from friendly neighbors.